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Categories: Marketing,

Marketing data is of prime importance to marketing teams in every company. That is because this data can help a business to do things they wouldn’t otherwise be able to do and understand so many things about their audience they wouldn’t otherwise be able to understand.

We talk about marketing data a lot around here, but we wanted to spend some time talking more about the specifics of how it can actually be used. After all, your data is of no use to you if you don’t actually know how to best use it.

There are a number of uses for your marketing data that can exponentially help your sales and marketing teams to generate more leads, customers, and revenue for the company. Sounds great, right?

Let’s dive into a few of the top use cases for your marketing data.

1. Develop laser-focused customer profiles.

If you are a regular reader of our blog, you already know what a customer profile is. Also known as a buyer persona or customer avatar, a customer profile is a description of your ideal customer. The more specific the profile, the better.

If your company is targeting middle-aged women, that’s a pretty broad audience. Instead, you should be creating more focused customer profiles, complete with age, buying interests, hobbies, career information, and so on. This can help your marketing team to create highly targeted ads, increasing the likelihood that they’ll generate conversions.

For B2B businesses, some of the typical account demographics that your sales and marketing teams might have down for your target audience include Industry, Revenue, and Employee Count. But why not consider expanded account and contact data points, like technologies used, job role/function, and more?

Many companies don’t realize it, but there is a lot of data at your fingertips. Understanding how to capture the power of that data is essential to improving your marketing and sales techniques. Big data can help your company to understand the buying patterns of your customers, what their favorite technology types are, how they find out about new products and services, how much they make each year, and so much more.

Putting this information together can help your sales and marketing teams to build an incredibly hyper-focused customer profile that can help with both digital advertising and sales prospecting. After all, the more targeted an offer is to any specific consumer, the more likely that they’re going to convert. There’s nothing more enticing than having the solution to an exact problem you’re having placed right in front of you.

2. Discover new market audiences.

Using your marketing data, you can also discover new audiences that you didn’t even realize were interested in your product or service. Taking a look at the demographics and user insights from your website and social media analytics can be eye-opening when discovering the behaviors and interests of people landing on your pages.

Although initial market research can get you this far, actually diving into your own customer data and insights is the best way to determine who is actually interested in your product. Your own marketing data will have far more truth to it than your overall market research.

Take a look at your data management software or CRM, website analytics, and social media insights to see overall demographics on the people who are actually following you, clicking around your website, and making purchases. If that information doesn’t line up with your initial market research, or if it provides insight into other target audiences, be sure to make note of that so you can reach even more people in your marketing and advertising.

3. Select the best accounts for account-based marketing efforts.

What is account-based marketing?

Essentially, account-based marketing is a type of marketing that takes a look at specific accounts and creates a tailor-made program or customer journey based on that specific account.

Your company can create several of these based on the types of accounts you tend to see, and then send various leads through these funnels based on their specific criteria. It’s a great way to create targeted sales funnels that increase the number of leads converted.

To create a successful account-based marketing strategy, here are a few things you need to keep in mind. Successful account-based marketing campaigns are segmented, meaning you’re not sending every single lead through them. These are narrowed down to a specific type of account. 

They’re integrated over multiple channels, including social media advertising, email marketing, and more. They’re content-driven so that you’re offering value every step of the way, instead of being completely sales-driven throughout your campaign. And they take time. A successful account-based marketing campaign isn’t composed of only one or two steps. These campaigns rely on consistent nurturing and education of the leads.

Your marketing data can help you to analyze your accounts and create these segments based on your findings. Then you can mark each of the accounts for their specific segment to get started with your account-based marketing campaign.

Pro tip: Watch the webinar: Account Based Marketing: 3 Secrets to Great ROI to learn more about best practices for ABM.

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4. Upgrade your lead scoring.

Lead scoring is the method of ranking leads or prospects by the likelihood that they will close into a sale. Your marketing data can help you to improve your lead scoring model to include expanded data points and standardize scoring of things like Job Titles by using the summarized job function and role fields and more.

You should be using data like the number of times someone engages with your company online and clicks on a link to your website. The more often people interact with a brand, the more likely they are to become customers of that brand.

You should also be using a data append software to fill in all of the gaps you could be missing from your leads. Although you might have important things like name, email address, and company name, appending even more data onto your leads helps you to improve your lead scoring and understand how likely it is they will convert.

5. Determine the data points that are most important to your company.

One thing that is extremely important to remember about data is that it can get very messy. When you have messy data on your hands, you don’t gather much value from it. This is why your data hygiene is such a critical component of data management. Understanding which data is actually useful to your company is a great start to ensuring your data remains clean.

There is a ton of data out there. Your company has access to a plethora of your own marketing data just through your website and social media analytics, not to mention your appended data and other sources. The truth is, your company doesn’t need all of it.

So when you start collecting data and using it within your marketing, it’s a good idea to pay attention to which pieces of data you’re actually utilizing. Hyper-focus on those, and go ahead and nix any data that isn’t of any use to your company. If you keep it, it’s only going to clutter your data management system and create a mess that you could have avoided with less information.

6. Create monthly or quarterly reports.

As mentioned at the beginning of this blog, your data is of no use to you if you can’t understand it. But not everyone within the company is going to be trained to understand what the data is telling them. This is why it’s a good idea to create reports regularly to hand to team leaders and executives so that they’re aware of what the sales and marketing team efforts are doing.

Using marketing data to create a report can also help your team to look at the big picture and see what needs to be improved upon.

If you’ve previously done quarterly reports, consider increasing your reporting frequency to monthly. Each time you create a new report, look at any new metrics or data points that should be included to highlight what your team has been doing.

Not only does reporting help to quickly and easily inform the powers that be of your successes, but it can also help your team take a second look at your failures and come up with solutions to ensure that the next time you try a similar campaign, it will be done better.

Access Our Free Webinar For Data Use Tips

Marketing data comes in many shapes and sizes, but it can help with so many different tasks that your sales and marketing teams undertake every day. Learning to not only fully understand and comprehend your data, but to also find ways to make it useful is essential to creating a successful marketing strategy. 

To learn more about how to use the data you have wisely, simply fill out the form below for instant access to the webinar entitled “Revolutionize the Way You Use Data.” 

Thank you for your interest. Learn the secrets of how to leverage your data effectively now. Click here to watch the webinar: Revolutionize the Way You Use Data.
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Jim Hopkins
Jim Hopkins

Senior Director of Product Marketing

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Jim Hopkins

Senior Director of Product Marketing

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